Stanley Schmidt Quotes

When you have the goods, you don't need to dress up what you're writing.

I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference. It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.

I'm not about sound bites. I'm about substance.

Don't write slogans, write truths.

When you write you in a way write out of what you think of as your best self, the part of you that is lacking in foibles and weaknesses and egotism and vanities and so on. You're just trying to really say something as truthful as you can out of the best that you have in you.

I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.

You can't have style if you don't have substance.

Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.

I think it's important if you're going to write a cookbook, it should sound like you talking - it should be things you actually believe, otherwise I'm not interested.

The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

Be truthful, say what you mean and mean what you say, don't ignore the given circumstances.

Naked Truth needs no shift.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

Tell the truth. If you tell the truth all the time you don't have to worry three months down the line about what you said three months earlier. Truth is always the truth. You won't have to complicate your life by trying to cover up.

There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections) nothing that satisfies quiet reflection--except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.

The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line.

As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.

If you know, say you know. If you don't know, say you don't know.

Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.

The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.

He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks.